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Welcome to the articles and resources section of our site. On the left, you'll see a list of links with useful information about how to better use Vocabulary and SpellingCity at home and in the classroom. Also, there is an extremely useful section of the forum where Vocabulary and SpellingCity users are sharing their lists. Dolch Words Compound Words Literature-Based Words Sound Alike Words Homophones, Homonyms, and Homographs Research and Articles about the importance of spelling and reading

The Resource for Education Technology Leaders focusing on K-12 educators. Site contains a Software Reviews Database, articles from Technology & Learning Magazine, articles from Educators in Educators' eZine, Event and Contest listings, Reader suggested Web sites, and weekly news updates on education technology leaders.

This article would be great for teaching the importance of proofreading.

This article appears in the Holt Elements of Literature Sixth Course: Essentials of British and World Literature text alongside Beowulf and an excerpt from John Gardner's Grendel. It is a good companion piece for Beowulf.

Book annotation article. Would be good for students.

Jim Burke shared this article by Nanci Atwell on the Myths of Independent Reading.

This article describes conditions in workhouses for the poor in Victorian England. It would be great to pair with Oliver Twist or with Blake's two "Chimney Sweep" poems.

Kids will be underwhelmed, but. Article: men backlash, women love it.

Create e-pub books from Wikipedia articles for mobile devices

Teaching as everyone knows, is a very noble profession. But what most don't realize is that it is also a very demanding and challenging profession. The responsibility of educating young minds and shaping their future is enormous. Added to that, a teacher's task is to mingle with the young ones on their terms and make the classroom a fun place.

Great article about how kids can help teachers when it comes to PD

Here are two great research articles about fluency & many links to poetry resources. Poetry is a great way to practice fluency. See sidebar for more resources.

This article on infographics would make a great visual literacy activity

Article of the Week - New York Times piece on identity and social networking.

Good article on using technology to teach Shakespeare.

They're getting rid of apostrophe's on street signs in Birmingham, England. The horror! Good article to share with students.

National Writing Project article about the English Companion Ning.

Jan 2011 article about research into the nature of reading - print v online and our need to explicitly teach how to read online

What are the origins of the English Language? The history of English is conventionally, if perhaps too neatly, divided into three periods usually called Old English (or Anglo-Saxon), Middle English, and Modern English. The earliest period begins with the migration of certain Germanic tribes from the continent to Britain in the fifth century A.D., though no records of their language survive from before the seventh century, and it continues until the end of the eleventh century or a bit later. By that time Latin, Old Norse (the language of the Viking invaders), and especially the Anglo-Norman French of the dominant class after the Norman Conquest in 1066 had begun to have a substantial impact on the lexicon, and the well-developed inflectional system that typifies the grammar of Old English had begun to break down. The following brief sample of Old English prose illustrates several of the significant ways in which change has so transformed English that we must look carefully to find points of resemblance between the language of the tenth century and our own. It is taken from Aelfric's "Homily on St. Gregory the Great" and concerns the famous story of how that pope came to send missionaries to convert the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity after seeing Anglo-Saxon boys for sale as slaves in Rome: Eft he axode, hu ðære ðeode nama wære þe hi of comon. Him wæs geandwyrd, þæt hi Angle genemnode wæron. Þa cwæð he, "Rihtlice hi sind Angle gehatene, for ðan ðe hi engla wlite habbað, and swilcum gedafenað þæt hi on heofonum engla geferan beon." A few of these words will be recognized as identical in spelling with their modern equivalents-he, of, him, for, and, on-and the resemblance of a few others to familiar words may be guessed-nama to name, comon to come, wære to were, wæs to was-but only those who have made a special study of Old English will be able to read the passage with understanding. The sense of it is as follows: Again he [St. Gregory] asked w

History of English (Source: A History of English by Barbara A. Fennell) The English language is spoken by 750 million people in the world as either the official language of a nation, a second language, or in a mixture with other languages (such as pidgins and creoles.) English is the (or an) official language in England, Canada, Australia and New Zealand; however, the United States has no official language. Indo-European language and people English is classified genetically as a Low West Germanic language of the Indo-European family of languages. The early history of the Germanic languages is based on reconstruction of a Proto-Germanic language that evolved into German, English, Dutch, Afrikaans, Yiddish, and the Scandinavian languages. In 1786, Sir William Jones discovered that Sanskrit contained many cognates to Greek and Latin. He conjectured a Proto-Indo-European language had existed many years before. Although there is no concrete proof to support this one language had existed, it is believed that many languages spoken in Europe and Western Asia are all derived from a common language. A few languages that are not included in the Indo-European branch of languages include Basque, Finnish, Estonian and Hungarian; of which the last three belong to the Finno-Ugric language family. Speakers of Proto-Indo-European (PIE) lived in Southwest Russia around 4,000 to 5,000 BCE. They had words for animals such as bear or wolf (as evidenced in the similarity of the words for these animals in the modern I-E languages.) They also had domesticated animals, and used horse-drawn wheeled carts. They drank alcohol made from grain, and not wine, indicating they did not live in a warm climate. They belonged to a patriarchal society where the lineage was determined through males only (because of a lack of words referring to the female's side of the family.) They also made use of a decimal counting system by 10's, and formed words by compounding. This PIE language was also highly infl